Beware weirdos bearing gifts...

When Sluggy arrived on Friday, she brought us some of our FAVORITE rootbeer from her drive through Minnesota!  Wouldn't you just know it?  She visited a liquor store and found it!

It's empty now... thanks to Leon figuring out how to get his own pop from it and forgetting to keep the cup there until he turns off the spigot.  The floor is still a LITTLE sticky there...

But it was pure deliciousness!!  Thank you Sluggy!  

I'm thinking of cutting off the top and making a little trash can out of it...

Unfortunately I don't have a strong enough can opener at the present...

She also brought us some gifts from her garage couponing stash!  Shampoos, deodorants, oatmeal packs of various flavors and which Maddy sampled for breakfast today.  I think she'll be taking all of them with her to college in a few weeks...  Sluggy also brought Meri a zombie shirt that she found while thrifting in Illinois and me some pop that she didn't think I'd find in the midwest, Cheerwine soda!  

Never heard of it, but am anxious to try it out this afternoon.

She was a great guest as well as a nut and we'd be honored to have her come back and visit us again sometime.  Or we'll crash their place at their mythological town that doesn't exist for a vacation next year!

After church we took Sluggy out to eat at a Chinese food buffet.  

hmmmm... What unusual item can we bring someone as a hospitality gift?

I'm thinking a local brewed beverage or nuts.

I'm melting! I'm melting!

You cursed brat! Look what you've done! I'm melting! melting! Oh, what a world! What a world! Who would have thought a good little girl like you could destroy my beautiful wickedness?

Sorry - my best friend is a HUGE Wizard of Oz fan, so we tend to quote from it often...

and your little dog too!

Saturday afternoon, Maddy and Meri got extremely wet while making a couple snowmen in our front yard. I was inside getting ready for our dinner party and it kept them from begging off of housework... Their lack of interest to help was plain to see, as plain as the nose on my face!

Here are their masterpieces!They came in and got curly egg noodles, colored them with black magic marker for the "doo". Cute, huh?Unfortunately Maddy's had already fallen apart and the top slid off before her boyfriend showed up to see it.

Oh, so she is! Well, bust my buttons! Why didn't you say that in the first place?

That was the evening of "Meet The Parents"...

Bah! We've known them for 17 years! Maddy had attended Kindermusic with the boyfriend at his mom's house when she was in preschool. And their older son was one of my son's best friends for many years. But we'd never had them over for dinner.

We grilled out steaks and chicken. Robb had to shovel a path to the grill on the deck. Baked some ginormous potatoes. Gayle brought some homegrown sweetcorn that tasted like summer. HONEST!! It was THAT good! She also brought fruit pizza! *drools*After dinner, we played a crazy game of Mad Gab. Meri rocks at that game! I think it's her keen sense of hearing and that's why she can understand when Robb and I try to whisper a conversation. She's used to making sense of things she shouldn't understand.

Then we broke out the Apples To Apples and my mother-in-law won. I think because she deliberately tried the most appropriate words every single time. dang. I should have tried that. When in doubt, I pick something that's an inside joke or the exact opposite... And Meri understands what most of the words mean now, so I can't bank on her picking Spiderman just because she loves him...

Anyway, we had a great time. I haven't laughed that much in one evening in a long time. Oh and this was when I told the potty training stories about Maddy. Of course we heard some funny things about the boyfriend too so it made it ok... It reminds me of Robb and my first years of married life. There was a girl that we worked with that on the weekends we got together with her and her fiance and had board game nights.

I need to make more time for things like that.

My! People come and go so quickly here!

Classic! and my standard...

This is a classic - plain white bread recipe because it says so in the recipe book... Oh and it's for a bread machine! This is my staple standard recipe that I make as often as I think of it. It's from The Electric Bread book, dated 1991.

I have a couple nieces and a nephew coming into town tonight that LOVE Auntie Val's homemade bread. (Say Auntie Val really fast and it sounds like Aunt Evil... really!)

So we were almost out of the last real loaf from the store, so I thought I'd throw a couple loaves in this morning. I've got 3 or 4 bread machines currently... I used to pick them up at garage sales and have even given one or two away. But they come in handy all at once when I need lots of bread fast... Like today.

I got all the ingredients out and realized I was low on white flour. In a pinch, I use a cup of wheat flour, so I do have some stashed away. But today, I was so low on all flour that I used 2 cups white and 1 cup wheat on one loaf and on the other 1 7/8 cups white flour and 3/8 cup wheat and then I panicked. Ok - I panicked when I realized I didn't have enough to complete a 3rd cup of any flour for this loaf... I could see it was coming as I filled the measuring cups but was in denial until the last little flour dust hit the cup.

I dug in my lower cupboards where I typically stick any extra bags of flour, sugar, instant mashed potatoes, etc.. and after rejecting protein powder and semolina flour I came up with a solution! I don't know why I bought this, but I've got a box of cake flour... So the 3rd cup was completed with that. I wonder how it's going to turn out!

Classic White Bread

for a 2 lb loaf
put in ingredients in the order they're listed.

3 tsp Yeast
2 Tbsp softened butter
1 1/2 tsp salt
2 Tbsp Sugar
1 1/2 Tbsp dry Milk or add a little swig of regular milk to the water.
3 cups white bread flour - or whatever...
1 1/8 cup water - room temp - just not hot or too warm... trust me on this...

This recipe can be made with the regular, rapid or delayed time bake cycles.

On my machines it takes roughly 4 hours and the house smells fab!